Arsenal receive triple fitness boost for Leicester game as Fabio Vieira leads stars returning to training

Arsenal have received a triple fitness boost ahead of Saturday’s match against Leicester, with Emile Smith Rowe, Fabio Vieira and Takehiro Tomiyasu all taking part in training this week.

The trio missed Arsenal’s Premier League opener against Crystal Palace last Friday, which they won 2-0, but are hoping they could be involved this weekend against the Foxes.

All three of the players have had disrupted pre-seasons as fitness issues prevented them from getting match fit.

Tomiyasu, who had calf issues last season, has been struggling with a quad injury but played for Arsenal’s Under-21s last Saturday and has trained with the first-team this week.

Smith Rowe, meanwhile, has had a groin issue but he too has trained this week and will hopefully be in the squad for this weekend’s match with Leicester.

Of the three, Vieira is the most likely to struggle to make the squad as Arsenal are carefully increasing the intensity of his workouts after a foot injury.

Vieira picked up the injury while on international duty back in June and has slowly built up his fitness over the summer.

The return of Smith Rowe, Tomiyasu and Vieira will give Arteta selection headaches for the weekend and moving forward this season.

Ben White has impressed at right-back recently, which has allowed William Saliba to start in the heart of defence, and Tomiyasu will provide further competition there.

Smith Rowe faces a fight for his spot on the left flank after Gabriel Martinelli’s impressed in pre-season and scored last week against Crystal Palace.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in